


Blacktop Bill - Prelude Pt1

by Ursinos



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 06:46:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7966627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ursinos/pseuds/Ursinos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Introduction of my oc within the Dresden Files universe.  Based on ideas I'm developing for the Dresden Files RPG setting for my area.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blacktop Bill - Prelude Pt1

** Blacktop Bill: Introduction **

_Here it comes.  You can do this, don’t flinch…_

“William Peters?”

 _Damnit!_ No matter how many years have gone by, the name still hits me like a knife to the guts.   I _think_ I managed to keep the reaction from my face, but I could feel the tightening of my stomach all the same.

“Please step out of the vehicle.”

Maybe it’s silly to have such a visceral reaction to one’s own name, but there is a lot of history behind it; history I didn’t want to think about in front of Canada’s Border and Customs agents.  There will be plenty of time later to tell you about the why’s of hating my full name.  If I can’t find a reason to avoid it, that is.

Climbing out of my truck – an old WW2 M35 “deuce and a half” converted into a makeshift RV (it’s a work in progress), I followed the agent into the customs office.   Ever since 9/11, customs had become so much more of a pain in the ass to go through; especially if you made frequent crossings without visible reason to.  They tended to pay more attention to oddball vehicles like mine as well.  It’s not often you see one of these old monstrosities lumbering about with a do-it-yourself camper installed on the back.

As you probably gathered from the Customs agent, my name is William Peters; William Samuel Peters, if you want to get particular about specifics.   Most people who _don’t_ work for the government know me as Blacktop Bill.  

In the customs office, we went through the usual gambit of questions and answers.  Did I have anything to declare? (Just a bottle of Jack Daniels I picked up at the duty free.)  What was my reason for travelling? (Oh, you know, I’m retired and taking the time to see the world a bit before it’s too late.)  Unspoken questions regarding my large number of border crossings on file; those I pretended I didn’t pick up on.  Unless they outright asked, I didn’t have to answer.    Thankfully, nothing like the incident last month which had me waiting on a 3 hour inspection of the truck because someone didn’t like my tone.  Fragging cops; self-important assholes, the lot of them.  Didn’t matter if they were Feds, State Troopers, or local boys – sorry, persons – they were generally sadistic bastards in it for the authority over others.

Eventually I was told I could go, the agent having checked my paperwork and my truck having been given a going over by others.  Before long I was back on the highway cruising northeast towards the golden triangle.

I gave it several kilometers before relaxing and letting the veil I’d been holding the whole time slip away.  Glancing over at the young woman who had suddenly appeared in the seat beside me, I smiled.

“You can breathe now.”

Oh right, did I forget to mention that I’m a wizard?

 I know what you’re thinking, and no, I didn’t play too much Dungeons and Dragons as a kid, no I’m not on drugs (though I have, in the past, smuggled them), and no, I haven’t been reading too much Tolkien (there is never too much Tolkien, I mean shit, really?).  I am an honest to gods, shaping the energies of the universe, subtle and quick to anger, wizard.

Yes, magic is real. So are vampires, werewolves, demons and fae.  Believe me, I wish that last one wasn’t true.  Fae can be more trouble than a bag full of snakes, and about as much fun to try to reason with (my passenger should know all about that.)   Overall, however, most people go out of their way to ignore all that craziness, and they’re probably better off, even if it means ending up more vulnerable for the things that go bump in the night.  Just ask a certain medical examiner down in Chicago about coping with being a vanilla mortal discovering the supernatural for the first time.   If it hadn’t been for that whack-job who lists himself in the damned yellow pages under “Wizard”, he’d probably be pretty bad off right now.

One of the few times I can say that an ass hat from the White council actually did some good.   If the whack-job weren’t one of their lot, I might even think about going down there and looking him up.

Yeah, if it ain’t obvious, me and the white council, we got issues.

See, the White Council is this group of wizards with world class powerful juju.  They are the cream of the crop when it comes to magical talent, and they have the egos to prove it.  They supposedly stand between humanity and all the supernatural predators to keep them in check, be that non-humans, or talented humans who don’t know enough, or are too stupid, not to break their Laws of Magic.

Ordinarily, if you learn early enough not to break their rules, and have a talent for magic strong enough, they “recruit” you.  You get indoctrinated into their nifty little fraternity; get assigned to a master, and live the rest of you long life following their rules and getting manipulated by their politics.  Not many get given any other option.

I’m a special case.   I wouldn’t be part of their little sewing circle if you promised me all the Alexander Keith’s IPA that I could drink.  

My passenger gave me a tired smile, and went back to staring out the window as we pulled onto the 401 and headed east towards Kitchener-Waterloo.   She had barely said a word to me since I picked her up in Indianapolis the night before.  Dispatch hadn’t given me much information on the situation except that a young woman was in trouble of the supernatural kind, and needed a ride up into Canada quick.  I happened to be the closest, so swung by to pull her ass out of the fire.

Dispatch can be pretty tight vague on details sometimes, but I guess that comes from the nature of communications through non-technological means.  We don’t have the same kind of resources the White Council does when it comes to walking the ways of the Nevernever.   Most of the drivers involved in the organization may not have that much strength when it comes to magic, some being not much above vanilla mortal, but most of us has enough Talent that it messed with modern communications methods.   Even HAM radio or CB tended to be unreliable when you weren’t within a couple miles of the person you were communicating with.  So we had to use a cobbled together magical means to pass on information.  It was effective, reliable, but limited in its ability to communicate more than a few sentences at a time.

So, all I knew about miss Abigail Thompson here, was that she had pissed off some kind of fae, and that one of our contacts, a professor at the University of Waterloo, had requested our assistance in extracting her.   About the only thing I’d been able to get out of Abigail was that she’d was a civil engineer, and that she’d had no idea that tree belonged to a Dryad. 

So, I’m guessing that doing her job meant harming the tree in some way, and said Dryad had friends that are out for revenge.

“Won’t be long now before you’re safe and sound in KW,” I told her, “and Professor Dietrich will be able to sort things out for you.”

Another nervous smile, a nod, but nothing else.

“The two of you must be pretty close.  I’ve met the man a few times over the years, and he doesn’t usually reach out to us for help.”

No response.

It was going to be one of those, then.  When Dispatch sent you on an extraction run, you generally got one of two kinds of passengers, the shell-shocked, or the hysterical.   After a few hours of the shell-shocked silence, I almost miss the hysterical ones.   At least then you can get _some_ information out of them.  It might be so chaotic that it takes you hours to put an accurate accounting of what happened together, but at least you had some information.   You could always slip them a valium with a bottle of water if they didn’t wear themselves out before you reached your tolerance of the panic, so it wasn’t that bad.

The Shell-shocked always got to me, and were one of the main reasons I hooked up with Dispatch in the first place.    When you see someone retreat into themselves so badly from the fear that they looked like they were already _on_ some sort of heavy sedative, it kind of hits you right in the feelings.   It’s even worse after you’ve seen a couple of them withdraw into themselves so deep they just slip away.

I really hope Abigail would not be one of those.

 

 


End file.
